


The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-12
Updated: 2002-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:53:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whited sepulcher, stained bones, the rites of mourning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

**Author's Note:**

> Bradbury Title Challenge. It's not happy. As in my X-fic days 'not happy'. And perhaps a trifle experimental. Be warned. To Te, who took me to dark places early in my fannish life, and made me _like_ it. Damn her. 

## The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit

by Brighid

<http://www.debchan.com/livia/brighid/br-smallville.htm>

* * *

Disclaimer: Not mine, not making any money at this. I use a colour photocopier, like everyone else. 

The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit  
By Brighid 

When he was young, he wore dark colours, muted shades. They were a sort of camouflage, really, plain and non-descript for all their haut couture lines. He had, in those days, wanted to blend in. He had wanted to ... start over. Be his own man. 

So -- dark, clean-lined suits and grey sweaters and if, sometimes, he wore a touch of purple, it was only a small rebellion. Only the slightest breach of convention. A small act of whimsy that Lionel would never have allowed himself, and so one that Lex had almost felt compelled to take. Such a small thing. 

Battles are won and lost over small things. 

In small towns. 

In smaller minds. 

He had wanted it to be different. He'd already had his fill of grand gestures, first as a boy scrabbling in the dirt of his mother's grave, then as a young man beating against the wall of his father's indifference with blood and sex and drugs and scandal. Big, no, fucking _huge_ gestures that got him headlined and hungover and heartbroken more times than he cared to count. Got him more scars than he had skin for. 

So for a little while he'd tried small. Tried subtle, but it just went so very, _very_ goddamned wrong. It had broken, twisted, like dying cattle in a field, like plants in poisoned earth. Like truths half-spoken, lies half-hid. 

Like a dark-haired ghost, haunting his dreams. 

It just all went wrong, dark and bitter and dirty, a stain on him that he could never quite get out, never quite rinse away. Not with blood or sex or drugs. Not with water, salty-sour and scalding. So ... a grand gesture. Something sweeping, something bold. 

Something to cover up the stink and stain. 

The first suit made him think of a line from a story his mother had read to him, something about a samite sleeve over a pale arm upraised with a sword in its grasp. A challenge, double-edged and gleaming. He found he liked the allusion. Found the story, tore out the page, tucked it in one immaculate pocket. Kept it there, as a reminder: 

All challenges are two-edged. Everything cuts. 

The first time Lionel had seen him in it, he'd laughed until he coughed crimson into fine, pale linen, smiling his predator's smile still, despite the hollowness of his cheeks, the near white of his beard. "Really, Lex. All you need is the big top and the multi-media ministry. You could read sermons about Matthew. Chapter twenty-three, verse twenty-seven, as I recall." He'd smiled at his own wit, still slickly, sickly charming despite the blood on his teeth. 

But the cancer, fine and green and glowing, was all the way through him, and very soon after Lex became a charnel house to Lionel's rank, dirty bones. His father's stink and stain preserved perfectly, invisibly, in clean, white wrappings. Lex found he liked the irony. It, too, served as a reminder. 

When they made him President, he closed his eyes against the sun, against the blur of primary colours that made his eyes ache. Backwards through the prism, all primaries become white. Physics, pure and simple. Like atoms splitting. Like the sweet, slow slide into entropy. 

When the last days came, he smiled across a battlefield he thought he'd left behind. Their mistress long since rotting in the earth, a few sunflowers yet bloomed. Gold, brassy, uncomplicated ... nauseatingly bright. He snapped their drooping necks, looked across the dying garden and smiled a white, white smile. "Just the two of us. Just like old times." He hated the clear blue glint of eyes that should have been ... muddier. Like still ponds and endless summers. He hated the thin mouth that looked too much like Jonathan Kent, too much like the cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch who'd sent an infant son hurtling through space. Hated the alien face that was all that was left of the boy he'd known. 

The boy he'd loved. Tried to love, as best as he knew how. 

A slow nod and Superman looked at him like he was looking through him but Lex knew he wasn't seeing anything at all. If he could ... if he could, it never would have come to this. "You've poisoned ... almost a whole planet, Luthor. What you haven't destroyed you've enslaved." He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly, a big hand slipping under worn flannel. He never wore the suit here, not like Lex. But it was there, all the same. Some things you could never take off, once you had put them on. Lex understood that, felt it in his bones. "Care to tell me why?" Superman's voice sounded tired and a little exasperated, like one grown weary of dealing with fools and madmen. Like he couldn't decide which one Lex was. 

"Because ... you killed him," Lex said finally, idly snapping the heads off of the last straggling sunflowers. "He was ... everything to me. And you killed him." 

Superman just looked confused at that. "Killed _who_?" he demanded, sounding angry, perhaps just a little afraid. He was not accustomed to not understanding. To not having Lex Luthor clearly defined, spread out and labeled like a laboratory specimen: One madman, one fool: carefully note his black and withered heart. 

"You killed Clark," Lex said softly, striding through the headless stalks, right up to Superman. His hand was strong and sure on the back of Superman's neck, and it bent for Lex, if only from surprise. His mouth was ... hot, a surprised "o" that let Lex's tongue in, and his sigh. Superman's taste was ... sterile, burned clean of the sweetness Lex remembered in Clark's kiss. He bit down hard on Superman's tongue, felt his teeth break, pushed them down the alien maw that had swallowed up his youth, his second chance, his Clark. 

Saw Superman's face twist at the sick realization of what he'd swallowed -- kryptonite, amidst the blood and bone and bitterness. It hadn't even occurred to him; he'd expected the ring after all, but it wasn't enough to do any real harm. It hadn't been enough for years. 

But now it was in his guts, crawling and deadly and killing him as surely as Superman's secret had killed Clark Kent so many years ago. 

Beware Trojan horses, and somewhere inside of Lex his father's bones clattered with laughter. 

Lex ignored the laughter, the fine irony; he simply watched Superman fall and twist and froth and die, until at last the clear, blue gaze filmed over, turned muddy. Until at last the mouth grew lax and soft and sweet enough for kissing. 

Told Clark good-bye, as he'd never had the chance to do, and then took off his white suit jacket, at long last done with the colour of mourning. 

)0( 

The End 


End file.
